feature
Boldly bearded and shamelessly mustached
From Matthew McConaughey to Brad Pitt, the returning trend of facial hair fashion
By Zach White
zwhite@kansan.com
Photos by Chance Dibben cdibbon@kansan.com
I look around at my fellow revelers at the Replay Lounge. I see two bearded men sitting at the bar, laughing. In the corner, a man with a mustache smokes a cigarette. Two more mustached gentlemen sit along the wall and discuss favorite musicians. In fact, it appears that more than half of those able to grow facial hair in this establishment have done so.
These sightings are not mere isolated instances. Bewhiskered fellows can be seen all over Lawrence. They sell you tacos. They style your hair. They even serve on the Lawrence City Commission. Our town is run by the fuzzfaces.
It seems that after 30 years of hibernation, the hair is back. It is so back.
Just how back is it? As the American Mustache Institute, a pro-mustache advocacy group, points out on their website, www.americanmustacheinstitute.org, the 2008 Academy Awards brought us the first mustached Best Actor winner since Paul Newman won in 1987, with Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. Heck, facial hair has appeared in some form on People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive list—including Hugh Jackman to Matthew McConaughey—for the past four years. It doesn't get any more official than that, does it?
In the world of motion pictures, the incubation of hair on the faces of famous people has also been sweeping the biz. Such immensely popular faces, such as those of George Clooney and Brad Pitt, have been covered. The anti-shaving movement has also been sweeping the world of music, with many notable indie acts sporting some distinctive styles, including Iron and Wine, The Flaming Lips and The New Pornographers. Even more mainstream acts have been jumping the ol'
wagon. Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, Brandon Flowers of The Killers and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie have all been recently sporting some all-natural chin covers.
The 1970s were a golden era for facial hair of all colors. America filled its movie houses to sit in quiet appreciation of such legendary mustaches as Burt Reynolds'. They tuned in each night as the news came forth from underneath Walter Cronkite's mustache, as if it were acting as a sieve, distilling the truth to its most reliable form.
to its most reliable form.
Where rock 'n' roll had
its Ted Nugent and Frank
Zappa, disco had ABBA
and its bearded king
Barry Gibb. The country
had flown into face fur
frenzy. And for those
with the look, things
were good.
Then, in 1981,"Uncle"
Walter Cronkite left the CBS Evening News, and took his mustache with him. This was the first step in the fall of the follicles and the rise of the razor.At least that's the way Aaron Perlut, chairman of the American Mustache Institute, sees it.
"Cronkite retired and it seemed like all of the mustached newsmen went away," Perlut says. "And it just kind of steamrolled until mustaches were deemed uncool!"
The following two decades, the hair had a difficult time reaching outside the realm of blue collar labor and secondary math and science education. The men came back, or rather, the hair did, bursting out of the cheeks and chins of America's men like the sprouts of a new spring, after a particularly harsh and trying winter.
It seems that after 30 years of hibernation, the hair is back. It is so back.
Festivals have been established in honor of the hair and the men who grow it.
Driven by the Internet and pride in their innate masculine abilities, men across the nation began participating in month-long celebrations of this hair, such as "No Shave November" and "March Mustache Madness." In fact, nearly every month has established reasons to grow, so there is no excuse to shave. Ever.
Since the late '90s, an international competition, the World Beard and Mustache
Championships, has been held biennially in locations across Europe and the United States. Started in Germany, the competition, divided into 17 categories, continues to be dominated by the Germans each time. The competition in 2007 featured the first
competitors from the United States. And the next round is to be hosted this May in Anchorage, Alaska.
The American Mustache Institute hosts one such event, the annual 'Stache Bash in St. Louis, Missouri. Not so much a competition, the event is more an excuse to get together and have some drinks with several hundred people who have a similar interest in the advancement of hairy faces. Aside from admiring masculinity, it is also a charity function. The money raised by the event goes to Challenger Baseball, a St. Louis baseball league for people with disabilities.
And it is not the first time that a man's natural ability to yield hair with absolutely no effort has been used to help others. Since
1999, a group called Mustaches for Kids has been accepting monetary pledges from friends, family and well-wishers to donate to charities. In doing so, the group has raised more than $150,000 for various children's groups.
During last year's television writers' strike, the chin-ful was once again utilized to aid a cause. Late night talk show hosts Conan O'Brien and David Letterman stopped shaving for the duration of the strike to show their sympathy for their staff's cause.
Not everyone is so noble in their growings, though. Most people's reasons for fostering their follicles fall between vanity and laziness. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Gavon Laessig, a writer for Lawrence.com and local purveyor of fine facial coverings, is rarely seen about town without some sort of decoration adorning the lower reaches of his face. Recently, he shaved his mustache in order to move in a more beardy direction. For him, facial hair is an accessory, a distinctive complement to one's overall look. Whereas women have makeup, all manner of jewelry and a number of hair-oriented accessories, Laessig is of the mind that we must work with what our gods gave us.
Nick Kellerman, a Kansas City, Kansas, iunion, studying Japanese, thinks similarly.
"People associate all of their clothing and things as ways to define yourself as a man, and what better way to do that than with facial hair;" says Kellerman, who has personally been growing sideburns since the age of 16, inspired by Elvis Presley, and braving some ridicule at the time.
And though the reception to his facial hair around here may have warmed recently, he actually just returned from a land of little appreciation for it. Kellerman spent a year
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March 12,2009